Each
morning I tried to shorten the time of the journey to the hospital but the city
was in the way. I was out of touch with
the traffic rhythms of a big city. If I
left before 7am, I could make it within a half-hour; any later and the time
blew out exponentially.
I patronized a
local cafe for breakfast. One of the
waiters got to know me and I shared with him some of Carolie’s situation. He was a Pakistani migrant who, in keeping
with many such encounters in a lifetime of travels to the Indian sub-continent,
was kind and engaging. His chats were
therapeutic in a way as they took my mind off the ICU. We exchanged tales of travel and coming to
grips with alien shores. I had been a
postgraduate student in India for over four years in the late 70s and early
80s, and he had migrated to Australia several years back. A shared experience of voluntary displacement
is an easy basis to strike up a rapport.
I appreciated a charming man who went out of his way for a bruised soul.
I
became a regular at a few establishments, as the familiar is a solace at times
of dislocation. Both luncheon and dinner
venues had staff that came to recognize me.
My demeanour was probably grave as the news most days was grim. There were no indications Carolie was waking
from coma and her vital signs were not stabilizing. Her oedema was alarming and the blood content
of her brain fluid remained high.
There
was nothing to lift spirits but the people I met in these small cafes and restaurants
were kind and understanding. I suppose
it comes with the territory if you run an eating establishment in the vicinity
of a large hospital – some customers are bound to be in the midst of crisis.
The
approach to RPA from the suburb of Newtown takes you past one of the old
residential colleges of Sydney University.
Just past the college is the side entrance to RPA - 500 metres as the
crow flies from where Carolie and I first met in the early 70s, at one of the
other colleges in the university precinct.
The front entrance to the main building is a little further on. To reach the ICU visitors pass through the
main vestibule to the back of the building or take a side road past the cancer
centre to a roundabout at the back.
Taking either path, the blend of new and old building stock hit me in
the eye
Victorian Gothic designs with tiled floors and stained glass give way to layers of industrial
glass and steel; interconnected sandstone vestibules bring you to a transparent facade, ceiling and stairwell through which an Escher-like staircase straddles
many floors. You emerge from heavy stone
architecture to a space filled with light, fluid textures and tangential lines.
You can reach many parts of the building via the ‘crazy’ staircase or by lifts
to higher floors. However, the
grandiloquent glass gesture to modernity quickly gives way to predictable
painted and tiled corridors; each floor looking much the same.
The
ICU is on the lower ground floor, along with various outpatient units. The approach to the back entrance runs a
dismal gauntlet of smokers, thrown together in their desperate need for
nicotine. Wheelchair-bound patients with
feed drips by their side puffed away.
One steered his wheelchair backwards, using his feet to get to a smoke.
Some were ‘escapees’ from ICUs; acute illness had not come between them and a
cigarette.
I recognized one of the smokers from Carolie’s ICU. He moved back and forth between one of the neurological wards and the ICU – recovering from an aneurysm did not get in the way of his need to smoke. When nurses put their foot down, he would carry on until they relented.
This was startling proof of the old adage that nicotine addiction is harder to beat than heroin. Many hospital workers join the smoker’s throng, a desperate absurdity given their proximity to lives curtailed by smoking. It is a terrible addiction.
To be continued....
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